Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Kobe Bryant and the March of the Militant Atheists

This is not called Tenuous Connections for nothing.

Is raising your child in a religion a form of child abuse? (I guess it depends which one) Some people certainly think so. What is it about religion that bugs people so much? I mean besides all the wars, and rampant hypocrisy when you get down to it, religious life is all about improving yourself as a person. I guess there's also the metaphysics, which seem totally absurd in today's secular culture.

Speaking of modern culture, Kobe Bryant is arguably the greatest basketball player in the world, I don't think so, but many people do. Certainly he's right up the top though. But if we're talking greatest of all time, this is where the critics start spewing vitriol in Kobe's direction. You see there's a great divide between Kobe and the player of all players, Michael Jordan. Kobe unfortunately had the gall to fool us into to believing that he was just like Mike and the way he played during stretches reinforced the notion that maybe, just possibly, he was even better. Then the 2008 NBA finals happened. What a disappointment. Kobe was just a Jordan counterfeit, oh sure he looked, he played, he walked and talked like the real deal, but number 23 he was not (argh, Yoda speak alert).

Kobe may be a lie but science provides a provisional evolutionary march towards ever elusive Truth. It may never answer the Big Questions though, like is there a point to life? People look to God for that type of thing. It enrages scientists like Richard Dawkins that religion has such a firm grip on civilization partly because the answers it offers can't be tested objectively (and hating on it seems to sell a lot of books, which is probably as good a reason as any to make a fuss). For Atheists religion is like Kobe Bryant, a highly provocative entity that doesn't quiet live up to its promise, but because it's so tantalizing close to the real deal --for some people -- it generates anger because it's trying to fool us and our Mama never done raised no fools. We too smart for that crap, ya heard. Hey, it's a bit of a stretch, but Kobe's on the decline and Atheism's on the rise, if you look sideways enough there's a causal connection there somewhere.